1. Field
Example embodiments of the present inventive concepts relate to a semiconductor package and an electronic system including the same. More particularly, the example embodiments of the present inventive concepts relate to a semiconductor package for a mobile system and a mobile electronic system including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
As recent electronic devices have been highly integrated with high performance, semiconductor packages are also manufactured to have a small size and a high density. The higher performance of the high density semiconductor packages at higher speeds generates a larger quantity of heat in the semiconductor packages. Thus, sufficient thermal dissipation becomes one of the most important factors for increase the operation stability and product reliability of the semiconductor packages and the electronic systems including the semiconductor packages.
Recently, a dynamic thermal management (DTM) tool has been widely used to optimize operation of an electronic system having a semiconductor package. In the conventional DTM process, operation of a semiconductor chip in the electronic system is automatically stopped by temperature control software when an operation temperature of the semiconductor chip is increased over a reference temperature of the electronic system.
In the conventional DTM process for controlling the temperature of the electronic system, a maximal chip temperature, which corresponds to the maximal allowable temperature of a semiconductor chip of the electronic system, and a maximal housing temperature, which corresponds to the maximal allowable temperature of a housing of the electronic system, are usually used as the reference temperatures of the electronic system. Thus, the DTM tool automatically stops the operation of the semiconductor chip immediately when detecting any one of the chip reference temperature and the housing reference temperature during the operation of the electronic system.
When operating the electronic system, the surface temperature of the chip is easily detected by various temperature detection tools. However, when operating the electronic system, the surface temperature of the housing is very difficult to detected within the electronic system. For that reason, the housing reference temperature is usually determined by adding an experimental safety temperature to the detected temperature of the chip. That is, the housing reference temperature is always higher than the chip reference temperature by at least the safety temperature.
Therefore, although the operation temperature of the chip, which is detected by the chip temperature detection tool, is sufficiently lower than the chip reference temperature, the operation temperature of the housing may be determined to be over the housing reference temperature by the DTM tool when the safety temperature is added to the operation temperature of the chip. In such a case, the DTM tool has no choice but to stop the chip operation although an actual heat dissipation of the chip is sufficiently allowable because the operation temperature of the chip is sufficiently lower than the chip reference temperature. As a result, the semiconductor chip in the electronic system is operated below the maximal operation performance, which decreases the operation efficiency of the semiconductor package including the semiconductor chip.